After months of debate, the UNM campus-wide tobacco ban will become a reality on Aug. 1.
President Schmidly announced the ban as a priority in November of last year. It includes chewing tobacco, cigars, hookah and cigarettes.
Some groups on campus are providing smoking-cessation resources, while others continue to question whether the ban is enforceable or even necessary.
Resources
The Campus Office of Substance Abuse Prevention, Student Health and Counseling and Employee Health Promotion are providing low-cost classes, literature, free nicotine patches and gum for smokers affected by the ban.
“We want to remove as many of the barriers as we can,” said COSAP program manager Jill Yeagley. “We’re really, really trying to get the resources out there.”
COSAP received a grant from the U.S. Department of Health to provide UNM smokers with free nicotine replacement treatments – like Nicorette Gum – which are available at the COSAP office in Mesa Vista Hall.
Yeagley said the free NRTs will help students invest in long-term plans to quit smoking, especially because students often spend less money for a pack of cigarettes – typically three to five dollars – than they would for products that allow them to quit outright.
More NRTs, which cost around $50 for a full treatment, will be available in the SHAC center once the ban begins, Yeagley said.
Health Education Manager Jessica Spurrier said SHAC is hosting “Freedom from Smoking” classes in Johnson Center to help tobacco users kick the habit. She said the room can only hold 25 people, but more classes can be added if the space fills up.
“We would be thrilled if we had too many people wanting to be in the class,” she said. “We’ll add another one immediately. That’s absolutely fine.”
The class meets Tuesdays and Thursdays from Aug. 4 to Aug. 27 and costs $10. SHAC will provide a four-week supply of NRTs to those who take the class.
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Spurrier said SHAC will also host classes for particular departments if they have smoking problems.
“We know that some departments have a higher proportion of tobacco users than others,” she said. “We’re willing to work with particular departments or organizations and acknowledge that this is going to be a challenge, but we’re here for them in tackling it.”
Despite the resources available for smokers, some UNM students think the peer-enforced ban is destined to fail.
Win Hansen, co-coordinator of Students for a Sensible Drug Policy, said his organization disagrees with the authoritative nature of the campus-wide tobacco ban. He said he supports COSAP’s efforts to provide resources but not the University’s enforcement methods.
“Prohibition has never worked,” he said. “It didn’t work in the 20s with alcohol. It’s not working now with marijuana. It’s not going to work with tobacco at UNM.”
Rather than imposing a ban on the student body, Hansen said a tobacco-free UNM can only come from individuals making the choice to quit.
“The way to deal with it is to address them as individuals and try and develop some compromise with them,” he said. “Not to preach at them from some platform and threaten them with some legal shtick.”
COSAP Research Coordinator Reuben Estrada said imposing the ban comes from concern for those exposed to secondhand smoke.
“(COSAP) is not against smokers,” he said. “It’s the harmful effects of secondhand smoke in individuals who are exposed to it on campus, who have no choice.”
Estrada said the campus-wide tobacco ban protects bystanders from inhaling even small amounts of cigarette smoke by outlawing smoking in walkways and limiting smoking to several smoking corridors around campus.
“The surgeon general put out a report that there is no safe level of secondhand smoke,” he said. “That was one of the things that prompted the UNM president to go forward with this initiative.”
Hansen said the issue of secondhand smoke is not so simple.
“Everything we do is a compromise between our rights and other people’s rights,” he said. “That’s never black and white. Prohibition is pretty black and white. I don’t understand why they think it’s going to work.”
If restrictions are imposed to protect bystanders from secondhand smoke, Hansen said the law should go further to protect people from other harmful fumes.
Continued…
“We’re hurting people with our car emissions,” he said. “Should we be forced to stop driving if we do that? We’re hurting people with everything we do. It’s a compromise.”
Hansen also said relying on students, faculty and staff to enforce the ban is unrealistic.
“It won’t be enforced and it can’t be enforced, unless you get the students themselves to enforce it,” he said. “None of the students are going to go and talk to somebody they don’t know and yell at them for smoking a cigarette on campus.”
Estrada said he has heard from many students with concerns about the peer-enforced ban, but he believes a tobacco-free UNM is possible even if it takes a long time to achieve.
“We understand that it’s not going to be happening overnight,” he said. “In time, it will become a norm for people to use those tobacco-use areas.”
Yeagley said mandating a smoking ban is an effective motivator for smokers.
“We’ve had students who’ve complained to us about it,” she said. “And we’ve had a lot of students – as well as staff and faculty – who have said, ‘I think this is great. I’m glad this is happening,’ including some who are smokers who have said, ‘This is what I needed.’”
